Final Fantasy Series News and Updates Thread

[Raithos]

You were right Zoltan, Square sucks. OL and Riku have shown me that. Bro I really dodged a bullet with giving up on FFXV lol

[Ash]

Hope no one minds me posting this here. Worlds Apart, an OCRemix album based on Final Fantasy IX was released on the 9th - http://ff9.ocremix.org/.

[AnimeGamer183]

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[south carmain]

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I wish they would stop making trailers with no gameplay. They're not advertising a movie...

[OL]

To be fair, it is a JRPG, and at least half of the expectation from fans of the genre tends to lie in the realm of storytelling and characters. That's usually the biggest reason anyone plays these games. So I don't really mind a lack of gameplay.
All the same, pretty weak trailer. It's like they didn't really want to show anything off, but people expected something to be shown for the expo, so hey, here's some random vagueries!

[south carmain]

I would argue that exploration and the battle system are equally important when it comes to RPGs. I'm not against them showing cinematics but I would say that the majority of people play these games also for the gameplay meaning them showing that is equally important.

[OL]

Can't say I entirely understand teases like this, but it's cool nonetheless.
First shots of Ramza from FFTactics in the new arcade version of Dissidia.
But... they don't show his face. Why? Couldn't tell ya.

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From the looks of it though, it seems like they're actually retaining the basic art style from Tactics for him, which is great. I think it'd totally negate the point of including him if they tried to make him more "realistic" like the rest of the characters, so good move there (provided that his face is the same).

[Riku Rose]

Kitade-san who is one of the FFXV programmers wrote a message on the Japanese side of the forum to explain a little bit more about the pre-beta stage of developement. You can read the original message in Japanese here and below is the official English translation

=====

Nice to meet you all, My name is Kitade Satoshi and I am a programmer. I am mainly responsible for maintaining the development environment for FFXV. Today I would like to explain some more about the pre-beta version of the game that we talked about on Twitter a little while ago.

The term “pre-beta version” refers to the product of development on FFXV that was put together in October this year. We have managed to achieve two things with this pre-beta:

1.) We have managed to get the game in a state where you can play the whole thing through from the opening to the ending. By doing this, all the dev. staff are now able to get a shared impression of the overall game.

In short, we can now say that we have done the groundwork for finishing all the different areas of content in the game and the overall product itself to a high standard, polishing up each individual element and fine tuning the gameplay.
There are mechanics and elements that are still undergoing testing and are not implemented in the release code yet, but making it possible for all the dev. staff to grasp an overall image of the game is very important for the next stage of the development process.
As a programmer, I am now in a situation where I can concentrate on the process of optimization and will be pulling out all the stops to get the appeal of the finished product across to people as much as possible.

2.) We have polished the first half of the game to final retail quality and established the final feel of the gameplay.

By doing this we have been able to extrapolate how much work will be necessary in order to bring all aspects of the game, including the feel of the gameplay and the standard of the visuals, up to the final quality level we envisage.
At the same time we have been able to check how actual players will approach playing the game and the pace of their play by inviting valuable players from outside the company in for focus testing.
We have entered the final phase of development now, where the technology and people’s feelings and intuition come together, and this is where the programmers can really show their stuff. You can expect great things from us!

=====

One thing to note is that game development is very complicated and there's still quite a lot of work needed to be done on FFXV but the team are making good progress

Nice to see this finally coming together. The last few updates have made it sound like not much progress had been made and they seemed more interested in working on the demo.

[AnimeGamer183]

I have almost completely lost interest in FF15 tbh. and thats saying alloottttt coming from me.

[Axm]

Happy New Year!

We will finally release FFXV this year, in 2016! In development, previous phases required wisdom and strength. However, moving forward the final phase will focus on effort and willpower.

I vow to you all that every member in the team will do their best to the very last possible moment taking responsibility and pride in their craft.

We will do everything we can do to finish FFXV to create an experience we are incredibly proud of and one that you will enjoy and treasure.

The whole FFXV team appreciates all of the support from each and everyone one of you this past year.
I cannot tell you how much it means to all of us.

We’d like to celebrate a wonderful New Year and as we approach the release of FFXV, I’d like to enjoy that moment with you all.

Director of FFXV Hajime Tabata

Also FFIX has been announced for PC and mobiles. It looks like they have cleaned up the graphics a bit
similar to the FFVII PS4 port so I hope we also get this on the PS4 along with the Steam version of VIII. Sure the updated models on the PS4 version of VII are nice but the character models in VIII and IX are so much more detailed that smoothing them out will be a big improvement.

Screenshots:

[Riku Rose]

Some short interviews from the upcoming Famitsu magazine with various video game developers have made their way online today, thanks to Hachima. The director of Final Fantasy XV, Hajime Tabata shared a little more on the development on the game and teased that we will see Final Fantasy XV at it’s finest during March.

Hajime Tabata: This year is the year we’ll release Final Fantasy XV. Currently, we’ve decided on all of its specifications and the beta version is under production so we can shift into the debug phase,” Tabata told Famitsu. “We’ll show the real XV during the release date announcement this March.”

More information is expected during the upcoming Active Time Report sometime this month. Final Fantasy XV is scduled to release on PS4 and Xbox One in 2016.

http://www.novacrystallis.com/2016/01/f ... ing-march/

Game Director on Final Fantasy XV, Hajime Tabata, spoke exclusively with Examiner about what kind of game and world players can expect when they jump into the highly anticipated camping, road-tripping, and magic-fueled RPG in 2016.

“As you travel through each region, you’ll see different kinds of enemies and will take different paths that make you do unique things in each one of them,” Tabata said of travelling between regions, “As you move through each region, the options for character growth and the different skills will start branching out as well.”

Tabata hinted that as progression through the game moves along, each new region opens up these new options for players. While not a new concept in and of itself, the open-world nature of Final Fantasy XV lends itself to some interesting options for progression in both narrative and gameplay.

“Each region will move the journey forward,” Tabata stated, “How the story is handled, it’s not 100 percent pure open-world, but it’s also not a pull along the rails kind of story.”

While Tabata wouldn’t commit to an either/or approach to the gameplay, he did comment that the game has consciously taken on both approaches in regards to moving things along, stating,

Tabata also explained that players have another option for travel with even more choice when traversing the regions, saying “There are also journeys by train, and we think people will be very excited about them.”.

http://www.examiner.com/article/final-f ... near-games

[Raithos]

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[Riku Rose]

Apparently this event will include the release date. I'm going with either June or July.

[AnimeGamer183]

I just dont know about FF15. The more I see the more I think they are adding more genres into this game, now its got this stealthy MGS kinda thing going on in that new video. I still say its trying to do too much, I will definitely be waiting to hear opinions on it, I feel like Final Fantasy is going full on main stream with this game *gags*

[Sonikku]

Can't say I entirely understand teases like this, but it's cool nonetheless.
First shots of Ramza from FFTactics in the new arcade version of Dissidia.
But... they don't show his face. Why? Couldn't tell ya.

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From the looks of it though, it seems like they're actually retaining the basic art style from Tactics for him, which is great. I think it'd totally negate the point of including him if they tried to make him more "realistic" like the rest of the characters, so good move there (provided that his face is the same).

Right after the video there was another youtube link with "Ramza's Theme". It had his face.